


A Fish Without a Bicycle

by zorilleerrant



Series: Maladaptive Daydreaming [3]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Aromantic Isabelle, Demisexual Isabelle, Gen, Internalized Aphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 23:08:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10056038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zorilleerrant/pseuds/zorilleerrant
Summary: Isabelle doesn't want a parabatai. In this case, it's because they share sex/romance thoughts, and she feels like that would interfere with her identity.





	

Isabelle never wanted a parabatai. She wasn’t always at ease with that decision. She just never liked the thought of lust suddenly popping up, when it usually takes so long to build. She never liked the idea of that far too intimate attraction now applying to strangers, or worse, having to call someone friend just because her parabatai got the hots for them. The most unsettling part, though, Izzy thinks, is that other component that they never notice, take for granted, don’t bother to disentangle from their sex drives or their sex lives, let alone their actual feelings.

Isabelle has seen the way the crushes spill over. It’s bad enough with her brothers, Jace wondering how much he likes boys, Alec wondering every time he doesn’t, but at least with them it isn’t _dating_ ; when one of them (when Jace) dates someone, the other one agrees to thoughts off, and stops worrying about it. But she’s watched too many of the older shadowhunters fall in love with a parabatai’s spouse, watched too many of them call it friendship when it so clearly isn’t. She sees that feeling, and it’s not one she ever wants to have.

She knows it would be easier to just find a parabatai that follows the rules, that feels the feelings her parents want her to fake. To wait for her sister (or brother?) in arms to fall madly in love, to be swept along in it, to fall in love herself with the next closest thing, let the pieces fall into place. She doesn’t have to be built that way if someone else can do it for her; she can just echo along. And she feels sick, sometimes, too, thinking of trying to lie through feelings that aren’t hers, gritting her teeth and telling everyone who asks. Having every single one of them believe her, because why wouldn’t they?

She doesn’t know whether it would be worse for the feelings she stole to seem like they belonged to her, or just to watch it from the outside, knowing all along that everything she felt was fake. Izzy’s happy the way she is. It’s everyone else who wants that to change.

She used to think she’d find a parabatai one day, someone who already felt like she did, someone who wouldn’t fall in love like that, someone who’d have warning before she fell in lust. She used to think they could share secrets the way they shared experiences. These days, she’d rather that person just be a friend. It’s not only because the people she’s found to confide in seem to be mostly downworlders, people who couldn’t wear that rune. It’s that they like her even when they’re not like her. It’s that she doesn’t have to find someone whose experience is exact, it’s that the little differences barely seem like differences at all, and the big differences aren’t insurmountable. It’s that her parents would say they have no shame because they already wear their sin out in the open, but her friends would say they don’t put up with hate because they have too much hate that they can’t just cut out of their lives.

It’s that when she speaks to Meliorn, she never has to worry that he’s falling in love, that he wants more from her than she can give. It’s that she knows he speaks the truth, and more than that, he’s happy to speak the truth to her. It’s that when she says they’re just friends, everyone believes her, and even if they didn’t, they would have to believe him. It’s that even when downworlders have the choice not to speak the truth, they have so much less reason to lie, so much less reason to ask her to lie. What she used to want out of a parabatai is something she’s had to find on her own, but now that she has it, why should she seek someone out?

Life without a parabatai is a statement. It says something about who she is and who she wants to be. Isabelle spends so much effort picking out the right clothes and the right makeup to present her favorite self to the world, so much time combining fighting styles and weapons to make them work with her instead of for her, so much energy finding ways to learn the things she wants and needs to know and not just what’s expected. Why would she spend any less on a choice with life-long consequences?

She wouldn’t mind one, really, she doesn’t think. But when Isabelle Lightwood wants to make a point, she’ll make it until she’s certain they understand.


End file.
